04/03/2012

It’s an age old problem. Your mortgage payments are due, you have alimony to pay and financially you’re in a pretty bad way. What’s the best course of action in this situation? Consolidate you monthly outgoings into one easy payment? Sell your parents belongings that they left you in their will? Sell your parents?! Why of course not, the most sensible solution to this conundrum is to pop on an Indiana Jones fedora and run into a volcano…naturally!

Those bad guys look familiar....NO, WAIT, NO THEY DON'T! (I never spoke)

And that’s just what our nameless protagonist does in VolChaos. For the above reasons our hero ventures into the nearest monster infested volcano to find wealth and fame. And if he leaves the volcano alive, well that’s a bonus!

VolChaos is the latest brainchild of Fun Infused Games – creators of Hypership Out Of Control and Abduction Action – and sees you travel back in time with it’s retro-pixel graphics, 8-bit sound track and terrifyingly frustrating gameplay – though that last one is a good thing.

Aaarrrggghhh, no-floor-touchy!

You find yourself in one of two positions in VolChaos, you’re either fumbling around the level, getting cremated by the encroaching lava, which rises in every level, or you have spent the last twenty minutes mentally mapping out a route for this entire level and you are trying to perform said plan before getting re-cremated by the rising lava.

Everything on this screen will kill you, apart from the Dinosaur - Zombie Dinosaurs are coming out in the sequel (the second part of that statement is not true)

In VolChaos you must traverse the 42 levels (plus Expert levels) gathering all of the gems in a level and reaching the End Flag before being turned into Adventurer Flambé and whilst this goal sounds simple enough, this game borders on the sadistic side of retro gameplay where anything can and will kill you if you get within three pixels of it and the lava is frankly – relentless!

This is a good example of one of the Expert Levels - and yep, he's going to die!

VolChaos *feels* like a retro game, which is exactly what some Indie games are great at – making you remember why you fell in love with gaming in the first place. I can only hope that FunInfused Games continues with the retro-feel of VolChaos. It’s an addictive platformer which employs some age old techniques to entice you to play ‘just one more level’Review Edited by Cheryl Swann